Suggested Readings

The following reading list consists of books that relate to the spiritual, relational, and creative strands of a “triple helix” of midlife renewal.

It contains works of both fiction and non-fiction. The books were chosen because they address issues, provide perspectives, or stimulate new thinking related to the triple helix.

The list is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather a current guide which will be updated periodically. Books of the “how to,” advice-giving genre, are generally excluded. Most of those provide superficial and simplistic formulations that embrace, rather than penetrate through or critique the values and cultural attitudes which block human development.

Reading List Categories:

Spiritual

Relational

Creative

Spiritual

These books, both non-fiction and fiction, address issues regarding meaning and purpose in human life. They raise questions, provide perspectives, and portray the struggles that men and women must deal with in order to transcend the short-term, self-oriented concerns that block or distort moral vision and principled action.

Erich Fromm

To Have or to Be

The Art of Being

Peter Matthiessen

The Snow Leopard

Nine-Headed Dragon River

Jack Kornfield

A Path With Heart

Lao-tzu

Tao-Te-Ching (Stephen Mitchell’s translation)

Philip Kapleau

The Three Pillars of Zen

Idries Shah

The Sufis

The Way of The Sufi

G. I. Gurdjieff

Meetings With Remarkable Men

Thomas Merton

Mystics and Zen Masters

The Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler

The Art of Happiness

Shunryu Suzuki

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Thich Nhat Hahn

The Miracle of Mindfulness

Peace is Every Step

Viktor Frankl

Man’s Search For Meaning

Herman Melville

Moby-Dick

Fritjof Capra

The Tao of Physics

The Web of Life

Gary Zukav

The Seat of the Soul

Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart

Frederick Douglass

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Kobo Abe

Woman of the Dunes

Shosaku Endo

Deep River

Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Awakening: A Sufi Experience

That Which Transpires Beneath That Which Appears

In Search of the Hidden Treasure

Call of the Dervish

Hazrat Inayat Khan

The Art of Being and Becoming

The Inner Life

The Wisdom of Sufism

Spiritual Dimensions of Psychology

Paramhansa Yogananda

Autobiography of a Yogi (Edition by Crystal Clarity Publishers)

Swami Rama

Living With The Himalayan Masters

Relational

These are works of both fiction and non-fiction, both classic and contemporary. They offer vision, insights, and wisdom regarding the tasks of creating mutuality and awakening to truth in relationships, particularly in the face of family, cultural, and gender distortions. These distortions underlie the self-deception, betrayal, and false intimacy so prevalent in relationships.

Jane Austen

Persuasion

Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre

Villette

Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights

Alice Munro

Open Secrets

Friend of My Youth

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

E .M. Forster

Howard’s End

Room With a View

Doris Lessing

Children of Violence series (the 4 “Martha Quest” novels and TheFour-Gated City)

The Marriage Between Zones Three, Four and Five

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment (the Pevear & Volokhonsky translation)

Virginia Woolf

To The Lighthouse

Peter Taylor

The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor

A Summons To Memphis

In The Tennessee Country

Graham Greene

The Heart of the Matter

The Human Factor

Erich Fromm

The Art of Loving

The Art of Listening

The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness

Judith Jordan, et al.

Women’s Growth In Connection

Jean Baker Miller

Toward a New Psychology of Women

Harriet Jacobs

Memoirs of a Slave Girl

Creative

These books address, directly and indirectly, the cultivation of creative, flexible, mindsets and perspectives regarding daily life and problem-solving. They do this from a diverse base, including everyday life practice; business and leadership issues; the evolution of consciousness; and the interrelatedness of all phenomena in the natural world.